Rhodes wrote:I am not denying the fact that there is violence in Lynch's work. And that this is sometimes directed at women.
But it is unbearable that so many viewers not only LIKE to see "empowered women" (etnic minorities, etc.), but also CRITICIZE the artist does not follow their preferences.
Too much focus is on the wrong questions: does he have a low opinion of women of a low opinion of men (who commit the violent acts after all)? Does he see women as weak? These are interesting question if they are disconnected from an appraisal of his work. But people are making this connection constantly! Even if Lynch WERE a sexist (which is of course totally unfounded), it still would not undermine the quality of his work the slightest.
(We see the same in Game of Thrones, by the way. "Oh, Sansa has to endure more male domination. Oh, she is raped! When will she finally be empowered????" But why wouldn't some characters be consistently dominated, weak and unhappy? This whole idea every character much go through a metamorphosis and there is justice in the end, is responsible for all kinds of Hollywood disasters)
You must have been reading different posts than I've been, because no one is denying Lynch his right to portray unflinching violence against women. I do, at this point, have reservations about how it's been presented in the new season versus his films though, and that's down entirely to matter of portrayal. I don't believe the man who wrote and directed his movies could possibly be sexist (and I'd hope this would be enormously evident if you'd bothered to read the posts you took such umbrage with a few pages back, as I directly stated as much), but I wonder if his fascination with the subject hasn't led to some lack of imagination this season about how women might be portrayed independently from violence, or how a darkness far expanded from the original scope of the series might be portrayed in other ways.
If that winds up being the case by the end of the season, it'll be because of an almost myopic fascination rather than a sense of malice. That happens. Artists are human. It won't diminish my feelings about his work or the parts of
The Return I find successful. In the meantime, discussion has simply focused on how the season and episode operate in that manner, and how it may or may not be different from his films, etc., focusing on craft and portrayal. That's an important, worthwhile conversation, and it was minorly infuriating to see you take an entire post solely to dismiss the subject or to pretend those engaging in it either don't care about or understand art. Especially if you haven't read through the conversation you're targeting; ignore it or read through it to see if your concerns have been addressed.
This is expressly, entirely, a conversation about Lynch's art -- no vitriol; no hyperbole; just talking about how this stuff works -- and I don't assume anyone is posting on this board because they have largely negative feelings toward it.
You built in an interesting secondary proposition into that post, by the way: Can an artist's social views (sexism, etc.) diminish the quality of their work? I don't think Lynch falls anywhere close to this category, like, at all, but just to address that, I absolutely do enjoy the work of more than a few artists who, frequently because of their time and place, hold or held repugnant social views.
When those aren't seeped deep into a work, I don't think the quality is diminished whatsoever, and it's just one of those bits of humanity you have to take. If the views do affect a work to the point of emotional or intellectual dishonesty, that's an issue, but I probably wouldn't be a fan of them in the first place if that dominated their output.
(And again; Lynch isn't in that category; I think his fascination comes from a good place and is brilliantly executed in his films; it's just with the pattern of abuse dominating female characters in season 3 so wholly and with its more distanced lens, I wonder if it hasn't accidentally moved into a less honest place in its portrayal, and that is the sole issue I've been trying to lay out. Talking about how the art operates; not attacking the artist.)
EDIT -- And, yes, as sylvia_north points out below, analyzing Lynch's work doesn't mean you're seeking to censor or change it. It's a high compliment. Even in seeming missteps, I'm fascinated enough by Lynch to want to dive into how and why it operates. There ought to be no cognitive dissonance in saying, "I'm not sure season 3 is entirely successful in the way it handles gender" and "I love Lynch's work."